Netvision: The early-disconnect fees! 40 NIS * 11 months = 800 NIS fees!

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

On Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 03:18:58PM +0200, Noam Rathaus wrote:
>
>I will start with thanking you for giving the other alternative - I believe 
>though that those are not very good alternatives, as you stated they mainly 
>talk about "phone" oriented services, rather than Internet oriented 
>services - I didn't see any mentioning of HOT aren't they a good alternative 
>(never tried them)?

Thank you. I was commenting on BBL because of the dealings I have had with them
to be blunt, it took me a year of back and forth between me, my lawyer, the
City of Jerusalem Consumer Advocate and others to resolve a billing dispute
that ended up with them accepting a payment plan they offered at the beginning
of a phone call and refused to accept by the end. 

In plain English IMHO they are not viable service providers. The same
with Pelephone, I had to threaten Roy Disney, who was a partial owner of
them at the time with a lawsuit because they decided to charge me 1300
NIS for a phone, which had nothing (blank space) in the contract. If I
had not worked for a major news agency at the time, and used my work
email, he probably would have ignored me too, like the CEO, etc.

In the process my bank canceled my credit card because I kept charging the
phone to it, although they told me they would not. When it was all resolved
I canceled my accounts with them. They continued to charge my horat keva for
one phone and never sent me a bill. 

When I stopped working and the account the payments came out of stopped
paying them, they ignored me. Four years later they threatened to sue
me. Since I am disabled and still out of work, it was easier to pay them
the 233 NIS than go to court in Tel Aviv.

So, IMHO BBL and Pelephone are not viable alternatives, no matter what people
say about them. That's why I said that. I then  went on to describe the
other alternatives.

>
>What bothers me is the fact that you have stated that BBL are scum of the 
>earth and Netvision is the greatest.

I also never said Netvision was the greatest. I just said that I had no
trouble with them. Did I actually say scum? I may think that, put I generally
don't actually call them that in public. 

Speaking of being bothered, was this necessary to send this publicly? What did
you expect to achieve? Dotan is not going to change his mind, I'm not 
going to change mine, and a request for a clarification could have been
worded in a way which would reflect better upon you to a future customer
googling you.

My experiences with both are well documented on public lists, so there is
no reason to hide them. Someone is not going to read this later and 
have it affect their opinion of me. 


>This kind of comment is redundant, as Dotan didn't try to convince you to 
>move, he just stated what he thinks. When you write the opposite from him, 
>you are just degrading what he is saying, and it sounds like you are trying 
>to protect your opinion, but again Dotan didn't say Geoffrey thinks 
>otherwise... what a fool, he just stated how unhappy he is, it is his right.

No, not at all. I think he is right to complain, and if Netvision treated him
that way, he should complain. I also in another email offered some suggestions
on IMHO how to deal with them.

I'm sorry you missed my point, but it was that there are plenty of alternatives,
but in my experience BBL and Pelephone are not viable ones. Orange, Cell-Com,
QOS, 012, Netvision are. 

I've mentioned HOT in several emails in the last few months. They went
from no outages for months, to several a week, with one or two a month
lasting for several hours.

Remmeber the whole thread on redundant multiple connections via different
ISP and infrastructure providers?

Geoff.
-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM